That's some good news! My GGGranddaddy retired to that area, and buried his fortune. Where do I file a claim?
(This is a good time for another story.
Years ago, a customer was in the shop looking at an old (1910) county plat book. He was leafing through it and found a scrap of Railway Express receipt with a notation written on the back of it. It looked like it had been there for years since the paper had yellowed the page where it been. Basically, it gave the directions where a number of gold and silver coins were put in an "oak box covered with lead, and buried with a Pin cherry tree planted on top".'
I kept that piece of paper around as a conversation item for a long time. Finally one day, a friend and I drove to the area and actually found what we thought was the surveyor's marker that the directions started at. After following the distances and directions given we came to a stand of Chokecherry trees. I had brought along a pair of bent wires that I was using as "divining rods"
, and started walking around the trees. Nothing happened until we actually went into the center of the "orchard". There was an area in the middle of the trees where the earth was entirely devoid of vegetation of any kind. Those bent wires I had in each hand were crossing each other every time I stepped close to that bare area.
Long story short...that's the end of the story! Over the years, the land which was located near a very rural lake had been bought by the State, and I never had the nerve to investigate further.
)
